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T O P I C R E V I E W

MadSci

NASA's social media blitz for the Curiosity landing on Mars makes me wonder what the coverage of the first moon landing would be like if it were happening today instead of 1969!

Fezman92

The Apollo crews would be sending tweets when they reached milestones, taking and uploading a lot of photos, if possible doing Google+ hangouts and other forms of video discussions and lots of other things. Imagine what Wally's 'gotchas' would have been like.

Jay Chladek

Neil and Buzz would probably record a PSA warning of the dangers of texting while driving (a LM to the surface that is).

Hart Sastrowardoyo

An erroneous headline would appear, saying Neil and Buzz had been killed trying to land with only 20 seconds of fuel left.

SpaceAholic

It did (exist in 1969).

garymilgrom

Scott perhaps you could explain what your comment means. Is this the DARPA experiement or something else you're referring to?

I'm chuckling to myself a bit because this is almost exactly what I said to my brother when we were watching Curiosity's landing. I sort of wish I had been around for Apollo 11, because looking back to that time, I can't even begin to comprehend the excitement and overall media blitz that surrounded it.

Fezman92 sums up almost all of it. We on the ground would be far more 'connected,' so to speak, with the mission through social media.

On a technological note, the first live images from the surface of the Moon would be in HD, and what an incredible thing that would be! Perhaps we'd have even more photographs, with the seemingly limitless storage capacity digital cameras have.

Far reaching effects: We'd see the same wave of inspiration that swept across the world back in the late '60s and early '70s, and any time something inspires people to go into the worlds of engineering or science, it's a wonderful event.

GACspaceguy

Come on now folks, you all know if this forum was available back then we would be on page three of the discussion: Did Neil say "a man" or not?

Hart Sastrowardoyo

Yeah, if cS existed in 1969 there would be threads on the Soviet Luna probe, the proposed manned Venus flyby and "Will Tom Stafford go back to the moon?"

garymilgrom

quote:Originally posted by SpaceAholic:It did (exist in 1969).

I disagree. The link above indicates that in March 1970 ARPANET reached the East Coast of the United States when a single IMP (router-like device) was connected to it. 18 routers were in place by 1971 and the ARPANET had about 100 computers connected through about 30 routers in 1977.

While this may be similar to the internet in philosophy or engineering; it is in no way similar to billions of people interacting in real time. Also, using ARPANET for personal messages or electronic mail was illegal.

So while a network-based system to exchange government messages existed in 1969, the social media connections, high speed data links and the portable digital devices used to access these connections did not.

British members might be able to pin down the exact date, but I'm almost certain that a crude form of internet did exist in the UK at the time of Apollo 11. It was called Prestel.

On edit - was introduced in 1979, so like all the best brides - arrived late for the Moon landing.

Robert Pearlman

I'm reminded what Thomas Stafford said about the internet and Apollo on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's moon landing.

If the Internet had been there when Apollo went on, we would have had a very difficult time of completing Apollo. After the tragic fire and at other times, there were all different engineers and scientists who said we should do it 'this way' or it's unsafe but then we had good decision makers who made the decisions and we went ahead.

Today when that happens, they go to their computer and send an e-mail to the staffers on the Hill, the congressmen, the press, to you people, and so it shows up all over.

We didn't have that in Apollo. It would have been lots tougher in Apollo. Think about that.